Missouri - The Springfield Three--missing since June 1992 - #7

Missouri Mule said:

The front door wasn't locked. It was IMO deliberately left unlocked. The side door was locked so far as I know and Suzie's key was missing.

It has been asserted that the exit was from the front door. That would seem to be the case and would have been established as fact if Suzie's key had been on her keychain. But since it wasn't it leaves open the real possibility that they exited through the side door. Additionally, that would have been much easier to conceal what was going on inside and when the women were loaded into the van or other vehicle.

My personal opinion is that the whole crime scene was staged including the entry and exit. And anything inside should be seen as staging. I doubt seriously that the overturned book on Sherrill's bed was really her getting up and seeing who was at the door, for example. The purses lined up, the missing photograph and empty frame. Probably the only thing that could be seen as realistic would be the taking off of the make-up. And that has also been called into question.

The one thing the perp could not allow was that the crime scene was pristine when the police would enter the home, perhaps 24 hours later.

My point was that it was necessary to get people into the house to destroy forensic material. IMO it was well planned and was not a burglary.

Click to expand...

Burglary :
without the effective consent of the owner a person enters a habitation or building (or any portion of a building ) with the intent to commit a felony , theft , or an assault .

Sounds like a burglary to me .
1 enters without consent
2 assault or felony was commited .

I'm with you on the staged interior / purses ect .
But the failing to " lock up " was more a function of hurry to leave or burglars don't ever lock up on leaving . Any one that could have predicted 15-18 people ? would rummage through the crime scene should play the lotto . Hope this makes sense .

monkeymann said:

It was JK that said that.....not mike. She said it in the Discovery ID Video. She said, "My boyfriend Mike picked me up and we drove to Suzie's house. I had never been there before". JK's words, not Mike.

Click to expand...

Right jk said it , but listen again she says " Mike SAID " perhaps she was nervous from the interview or Freudian slip ?

TexasT said:

Burglary :
without the effective consent of the owner a person enters a habitation or building (or any portion of a building ) with the intent to commit a felony , theft , or an assault .

Sounds like a burglary to me .
1 enters without consent
2 assault or felony was commited .

I'm with you on the staged interior / purses ect .
But the failing to " lock up " was more a function of hurry to leave or burglars don't ever lock up on leaving . Any one that could have predicted 15-18 people ? would rummage through the crime scene should play the lotto . Hope this makes sense .

Click to expand...

If the women were in the home, it wouldn't have been a burglary, would it; more likely an armed robbery? And no money was taken (that we know of.) In any event, there were many well heeled home owners just a block away that would have netted the intruders much more in the way of money or other items.

I am providing an alternate theory of what took place in my opinion. I would also add that a professional analyst with a very impressive resume who contacted me presented a nearly identical scenario.

What I am saying is that we have been looking at this case for many years and coming up with no new revelations that would answer the questions people have. Anyway, I will watch to see if anyone else has the key to putting this case to bed.

It appears that I am going to have to eat some crow. A source on another forum has confirmed that Suzie did not have a key to the side door. Since all the other keys were accounted for it would have to mean exit was from the front door. Mea culpa.

Missouri Mule said:

It appears that I am going to have to eat some crow. A source on another forum has confirmed that Suzie did not have a key to the side door. Since all the other keys were accounted for it would have to mean exit was from the front door. Mea culpa.

Click to expand...

Were you in spd in June 92 ?

TexasT said:

Were you in spd in June 92 ?

Click to expand...

Part of June, but we were in Montana on vacation during that time. Why do you ask?

TexasT said:

Right jk said it , but listen again she says " Mike SAID " perhaps she was nervous from the interview or Freudian slip ?

Click to expand...

I have never heard JK say , "Mike Said". What video did you see that in, and in what part?

Missouri Mule said:

Part of June, but we were in Montana on vacation during that time. Why do you ask?

Click to expand...

I would guess that the question pertains to, the last time you were asked the same question? Not that the question has any bearing on anything. But you remember when, why, and who asked you about this issue previously......right?

monkeymann said:

I have never heard JK say , "Mike Said". What video did you see that in, and in what part?

Click to expand...

7:09 minute mark in the video . The 2011 disapperared episode .

Missouri Mule said:

Part of June, but we were in Montana on vacation during that time. Why do you ask?

Click to expand...

Curious about the 3 vehicles , didn't know if you had gone by and knew how long they were left out . I understand they were not towed to a crime lab for processing ?

Mike on his facebook page has previously quoted part of Don Henley's song Dirty Laundry that is meant to criticize reporters. He quotes the part about a stupid girl with bleach blond hair who gets satisfaction from gossiping. Suzie had bleach blonde hair and had learning difficulties. So she could have been considered by Mike as an airhead bleach blonde. While he did probably not directly refer to the murders, I do think Mike gets really angry about meddling in his business. And I think he considered Suzie annoying even before she talked to police about the vandalization. Suzie was supposed testify against Mike and Dustin. I think this enraged Mike in particular and I think that if they are guilty, Mike is the mastermind in all this and the one who set this off.

Part of the song and exact quote of Mike's from November 2013:

"Got the bubble-headed-bleach-blond who
Comes on at five
She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam
In her eye
It's interesting when people die"

From his Facebook you can also see he is interested in making swords and apparently also collects them. And he is still in contact with Dustin. On the anniversary of a car crash in which he was injured, he thanked Dustin. He apparently thinks Dustin saved his life. Considering they are still in contact after so many years and there seems to be deep loyalty between them, it could explain why they haven't talked over he years. Of the third man Joseph Riedel who was supposedly with them, I don't know what happened to him. If he is still around, he could be the key to solving the case. I think police could try to make a deal with one of the men in exchange for testifying against others.

TexasT said:

Curious about the 3 vehicles , didn't know if you had gone by and knew how long they were left out . I understand they were not towed to a crime lab for processing ?

Click to expand...

I didn't even hear much about this case until I walked into my office and it was all abuzz about the case. But when the "48 Hours" piece aired that is when I became very interested. I couldn't understand how nothing was known after that much time had elapsed. Fortunately, I had a whole lot of newspapers stacked up from the time I was gone and was able to read most of them to get up to speed. What I didn't have I got from the city library about two blocks from where I worked at the time.

I used to drive down Glenstone in the mornings going to work. The house was just a stone's throw faway. We even had a former police officer who participated in the search come to work for us. One of my co-workers actually went to Sherrill some two days just prior to them going missing and my own boss went to her as well. I just couldn't understand how this case could go unsolved with nearly the entire city in an uproar and looking for them. What I was told by a LE officer was that the crime scene was so corrupted that it was "unsolvable." He also knew most of the cops working the case.

But to answer your question, I don't know the answer to your questions. Interesting that they were not towed to a crime lab. Seems odd. But that's typical for this particular crime. Nothing seems like it would be expected to be. Makes one think....hmmmmm.

Regarding the discussion of the contamination of the crime scene-- I would love to see a list of the people who were in the house before LE realized it was a crime scene. And I still think the "criminals returning to the scene of the crime" did so with the phone.

What I don't get about a "contaminated crime scene" is why can't law enforcement get names, buccal swabs for dna and fingerprints of anyone who was in that house the day these women went found missing? Yes, it would be more work for them , it makes no sense that they would just give up on a potential crime scene that could have held valuable evidence.....

I also agree that the phone calls were made by at least one of the abductors( if there were more than one ) as a means of returning to the crime scene, abducting and probably killing these three women wasn't enough for this sicko, he wanted to frighten and taunt the family and friends.....

The really frightening thing about this is that any one of us could become victims in our own homes like these women were....

TexasT said:

7:09 minute mark in the video . The 2011 disapperared episode .

Click to expand...

You need to re-listen to the video. You're not hearing it correctly. JK says, "Mike, my boyfriend picked me up, so we went to Suzie's house, I had never been to the house before, they had just moved there recently" Verbatim!

While it is interesting to speculate the perp(s) planned for a contaminated crime scene, that's a big gamble to take.
If the perp(s) really wanted to ensure the crime scene provided no clues, I think they'd have burned the house.
So there's the more certain destruction of the crime scene with the fire, but it more quickly draws attention to the missing women.
Or the hope the crime scene is contaminated by people coming to the house, but a hopeful delay in reporting the women are missing.
That is unless you have someone directing people into the crime scene in hopes of contamination and delay of discovery of the women are really missing.

Valiant said:

While it is interesting to speculate the perp(s) planned for a contaminated crime scene, that's a big gamble to take.
If the perp(s) really wanted to ensure the crime scene provided no clues, I think they'd have burned the house.
So there's the more certain destruction of the crime scene with the fire, but it more quickly draws attention to the missing women.
Or the hope the crime scene is contaminated by people coming to the house, but a hopeful delay in reporting the women are missing.
That is unless you have someone directing people into the crime scene in hopes of contamination and delay of discovery of the women are really missing.

Click to expand...

Burning a crime scene is always a possibility to cover up what went down. My personal opinion is that this would have brought so much attention to the crime that it couldn't have been hoped to prevent discovery of the truth. We have here a crime scene that was undiscovered to be as such until the police came many hours later. By then the crime scene was hopelessly contaminated. My personal opinion is that this crime was carefully planned and executed to perfection. We are still scratching our heads today, nearly a quarter century later trying to figure out the most insignificant of details.

Not entirely sure what you mean about directing people into the crime scene. Isn't that what has been suggested if the front door was, as I believe, left deliberately unlocked?

The more I think about this is that the cleaning up of the glass shards may, in the end, have been the most important of the contamination. If it could have been established that the glass globe fell in a struggle or was it deliberately broken would have provided a way forward to viable theories of what happened. While many have speculated that it was broken to bring someone to the door, I would be inclined to believe it was broken on exit and in a struggle or it was done purposely to further ensure visitors would enter the house. The bottom line is that had that door been locked the crime scene would have been pristine when the police finally came on the scene. With that 90% of the questions would have been answered which we are still debating even today.

As to the fire it would have been investigated and a cause would have been determined in all probability. With a deliberate setting of the fire, it would have been more thoroughly investigated much earlier on. In this case, people were still struggling over whether the women may have left of their own volition or were abducted. What happened was the smart play. What we need is a good motive. We can rule out burglary and we can rule out voluntarily going missing. What else do we really know?

Missouri Mule,

Why remove the women from the house at all? Do you think that they were kept alive for a period of time somewhere else and assaulted for a few days and then murdered?

marable said:

Missouri Mule,

Why remove the women from the house at all? Do you think that they were kept alive for a period of time somewhere else and assaulted for a few days and then murdered?

Click to expand...

From all that I know and believe this crime had to do with eliminating either (primarily Suzie) from giving testimony in the upcoming legal proceeding. I'm do not believe this was a sexual assault. I have been told elsewhere they died not long after they were abducted. I am strongly inclined to believe that. Is it provable? No.

But you raise an important point. Why not murder them in the house and leave? I would answer it this way. I lived in Springfield for 26 years. My opinion is that a cold blooded murder of three women so near a wealthy area would not have been tolerated as this was. For the longest time it was the belief of some, mostly family, that they would be found alive. After a while memories fade and today many people living there are unfamiliar with the case.

I think the court case was liable to touch on other, larger matters, about which it was feared Suzie knew too much. I've always felt the case was, somehow, about drugs -- they're the sorts of things that make people disappear.